Sidelined: U.S. fails for the second time in Quartet discussions on ‘Jewish state’

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss.

While the Diplomatic Quartet scrambled to avert action on Palestine at the Security Council, the Obama administration was reportedly busy lobbying to commit the Quartet to affirming Israel’s Jewish character.  That the Quartet statement’s purpose was not achieved and that the Obama administration’s efforts failed further highlights the death of the Oslo era and the decreasing relevance of the U.S. in a fast changing Middle East.

The weak Quartet statement only proposed a timeline for more negotiations, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) didn’t find anything in the statement that might coax them to talk with an Israeli government continuing to colonize Palestinian land.  The UN bid by the PA further sidelines a Quartet whose envoy is strongly biased against the Palestinians.

And the Obama administration’s failure to turn the Quartet into even more of a biased mediator marks the second time they have failed to do so; Daniel Levy first reported for Foreign Policy that the U.S. tried to get the Quartet to state that Israel was the “homeland of the Jewish people” for the first time in July. (See this excellent piece in Mondoweiss—originally in the Journal of Palestine Studies—explaining why Palestinians can’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state.) The U.S. failure to get the Quartet to agree to sign on to Israel’s new condition that the Palestinians become Zionists surely marks a new, and low, era for U.S.-brokered negotiations.

Jonathan Cook correctly writes in the National that the whole Palestinian bid for statehood represents a death knell for the U.S. role in Israel/Palestine:

If Mahmoud Abbas, the long-suffering head of the Palestinian Authority, has  achieved anything for his people at the UN, it is not imminent statehood but the  fatal discrediting of the US as arbiter of a Middle East peace. US President  Barack Obama’s promised veto on a Palestinian state declares the demise not only  of the Oslo process but also of the US role as an honest broker.

The Palestinian statehood bid is fast making the U.S., who has spent decades as Israel’s lawyer, irrelevant. No one is crying over the loss.

Breivik manifesto outlines virulent right-wing ideology that fueled Norway massacre

A detailed manifesto reportedly written by the alleged perpetrator behind the Norway massacre was posted on the web yesterday by an American blogger.
Titled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” it sheds significant light on the virulent and extreme right-wing, anti-Islam and anti-immigrant ideology which appears to have fueled Anders Behring Breivik’s murder of over 90 people on Friday.

As the Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah notes:

Anders Behring Breivik saw himself as a holy warrior and crusader engaged in a war against a “Marxist-Islamist alliance” that he feared would take over Europe if not stopped. He hoped by his actions to inspire “thousands” to follow in his path. He described himself as a “martyr” and “resistance fighter.”

He described members of Norway’s Labour Party as “traitors” because of their alleged support of “multiculturalism and Islamisation.” Behring advocated “terror” attacks on mosques, especially during Muslim relgious holidays.

This is according to a 1,500 page manuscript Breivik himself wrote. Norway’s public broadcaster NRK reported on the manuscript and that Breivik had admitted to writing and disseminating it (Google translation of NRK report).

In addition, the manuscript provides a more detailed look at how Breivik’s strong support for extremist Israeli policies fits into his worldview.  Professed throughout the manifesto is a motif of unwavering support for Israel–a key component of Breivik and his ilk’s ideology–in addition to  support for the mass deportations of Arabs and Muslims from Israel/Palestine.  Here are some examples taken from an English translation of the manuscript written by Breivik:

Let’s end the stupid support for the Palestinians that the Eurabians have encouraged, and start supporting our cultural cousin, Israel…(page 338)

I believe Europe should strive for:

A cultural conservative approach where monoculturalism, moral, the nuclear family, a free market, support for Israel and our Christian cousins of the east, law and order and Christendom itself must be central aspects (unlike now). Islam must be re-classified as a political ideology and the Quran and the Hadith banned as the genocidal political tools they are…(page 661)

As part of a “draft” for a so-called “European Declaration of Independence,” Breivik also writes:

A public statement in support of Israel against Muslim aggression should be issued, and the money that has previously been awarded to Palestinians should be allocated partly to Israel’s defence, partly to establish a Global Infidel Defence Fund with the stated goal of disseminating information about Muslim persecution of non-Muslims worldwide

Max Blumenthal succintly explains here why Israel occupies such a central role in the Islamophobic far-right’s imagination:

While in many ways Breivik shares core similarities with other right-wing anti-government terrorists, he is the product of a movement that is relatively new, increasingly dangerous, and poorly understood. I described the movement in detail in my “Axis of Islamophobia” piece, noting its simultaneous projection of anti-Semitic themes on Muslim immigrants and the appeal of Israel as a Fort Apache on the front lines of the war on terror, holding the line against the Eastern barbarian hordes. Breivik’s writings embody this seemingly novel fusion, particularly in his obsession with “Cultural Marxism,” an increasingly popular far-right concept that positions the (mostly Jewish) Frankfurt School as the originators of multiculturalism, combined with his call to “influence other cultural conservatives to come to our…pro-Israel line.”

Breivik and other members of Europe’s new extreme right are fixated on the fear of the “demographic Jihad,” or being out-populated by overly fertile Muslim immigrants. They see themselves as Crusader warriors fighting a racial/religious holy war to preserve Western Civilization. Thus they turn for inspiration to Israel, the only ethnocracy in the world, a country that substantially bases its policies towards the Palestinians on what its leaders call “demographic considerations.” This is why Israeli flags invariably fly above black-masked English Defense League mobs, and why Geert Wilders, the most prominent Islamophobic politician in the world, routinely travels to Israel to demand the forced transfer of Palestinians.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency also picks up the story in an article today, “Norway killer espoused new right-wing, pro-Israel philosophy”:

The confessed perpetrator in the terror attack in Norway espoused a new right-wing philosophy allied with Israel against Islam – a trend in European populist and far-right movements that has Israel worried…

European right-populist parties increasingly have been waving the flag of friendship with Israel. Last month, after it emerged that German-Swedish far-right politician Patrik Brinkmann had met in Berlin with Israeli Likud lawmaker Ayoub Kara, deputy minister for Development of the Negev and Galilee, Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that Kara be prevented from making further trips abroad.

According to Ynet, Lieberman accused Kara of meeting with neo-Nazis and causing damage to Israel’s image. Brinkman said he had reached out to Israeli rightists hoping to build a coalition against Islam

There are supporters of Israel who refuse to acknowledge the central role right-wing Zionism plays in the current attempt to gin up anti-Muslim sentiment.  But the actions and words of Breivik, and those from whom he drew inspiration, make clear that it is imperative to acknowledge, understand and combat what Blumenthal aptly calls the “axis of Islamophobia.”

 

LGBT Center bars Palestine solidarity group

This article originally appeared in the latest issue of the Indypendent. 

When the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center, located on West 13th Street in Greenwich Village, imposed an “indefinite moratorium” early last month on pro-Palestinian groups using their meeting spaces, the center’s leadership hoped to put the controversy over Palestine solidarity organizing there to rest.

Instead, the center has stirred up a hornet’s nest of radical queer activists and their allies who are calling attention to the moratorium and demanding that it be reversed.

Two newly formed groups, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QAIA) and Queers for an Open LGBT Center (QFOLC), are turning up the heat on the Chelsea-area center, making New York the latest battleground over Israel within LGBT communities.

Demonstrations, sit-ins and pickets have greeted the LGBT Center in recent weeks.

Queer Palestine solidarity activists are angry at what they call “censorship” at a community center that has caved to Zionist donor pressure. Activists also say that the center’s response to their protests has disappointed them. For example, activists say the LGBT Center hired private guards in response to a March protest.

“The center [leadership has] betrayed the mission of the center. They have turned their backs on the community that they claim to serve, and they are excluding, expelling and banning people from the center based purely on their political perspective,” said Pauline Park, a founding member of QFOLC and a prominent transgender rights activist.

Read the whole thing here.

Mona Eltahawy’s speech signals shift in mainstream discourse that Zionists don’t want

Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy’s speech at the J Street conference was more than just another good speech–it’s a further indication of the shift in discourse on the Middle East following the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and around the region.  Slowly but surely, alternative narratives about the Middle East and Israel/Palestine, voiced by Arabs, are making a dent on how Americans think about the region.

Eltahawy didn’t mince words in speaking to the liberal Zionist lobby group, and she received a standing ovation.  She called the 2008-09 assault on Gaza a “massacre” and told the audience that Arab “hatred for Israel… will not end until you lift the siege on Gaza and treat Palestinians with freedom and dignity.”  It’s a message that, coming from a woman who has become one of the corporate media’s go-to people on the Middle East, is significant, and not something you would hear at some of the other J Street panels (Nachman Shai of Kadima said that Israel won’t lift the siege until Gilad Shalit is freed).

Eltahawy’s star speech at the conference is part of what is shattering the Zionist narrative on Israel/Palestine, and they’re not liking it one bit.

Ron Radosh at the neoconservative Pajamas Media goes after Eltahawy here. And Ben Sales, writing for the Jewish student magazine New Voices, derides the response Eltahawy got by saying the J Street crowd was “clapping for hate.”

Eltahawy’s speech is concerning to Radosh and others because it exposes Israel as what it is:  a state that is in deep trouble, a state that is an occupier state, a state that committed war crimes in Gaza.  Indeed, as Phil Weiss put it, “the Egyptian revolution is coming–to the USA.”  And Eltahawy is one of the leaders.

‘Progressive Zionist’ group in U.S. calls for settlement boycott

The liberal Zionist organization Meretz USA is calling on American Jews and Israelis to boycott West Bank settlements.

While distancing itself from the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, the statement represents a significant stand among left-leaning American Zionist groups who profess their belief in the two-state solution.

Even more significant is the fact that Meretz USA is closely linked with J Street, the liberal group that has taken great pains to distance itself from the BDS movement.  Meretz USA was a partner in J Street’s first annual conference, and the Union of Progressive Zionists, which Meretz USA helped to found, was “reorganized” as J Street U, the group’s college wing.

J Street’s official position on a boycott of settlements is more nuanced than their total rejection of the Palestinian-led BDS movement, but the organization has refused to come out in support of a settlement boycott.

The February 15 statement from Meretz USA, titled “Buy Israel–Don’t Buy Settlements (They’re not the Same)” reads:

We believe it is of great importance to actively oppose the policies of Occupation and settlement while at the same time struggling to defend Israel against those seeking its destruction.  Consequently we:

• Support the actions of Israeli performers, directors and writers who refuse to participate in performances held in Ariel or any other settlement beyond the Green Line.

• Support the actions of Israeli university professors who refuse to teach at or have professional ties with institutions of higher education in Ariel or any other settlement beyond the Green Line.

• Believe that American Jews, in order to express their support for the brave Israeli citizens refusing to cooperate with settlement policy, should refuse to purchase any goods or services, including tourism services, made in or by the settlements.

• Believe that American Jews should express their support for Israel’s continued existence within the Green Line by purchasing Israeli goods and services that are made within the Green Line.

• Disagree with calls to boycott, divest from or sanction Israel proper (within the Green Line), which we believe are misguided and ineffective.  Such a broad set of actions amounts to a blunt punishment of all Israelis, rather than a targeted approach that focuses on the issue of settlements and Occupation, and is incapable of bringing those polices to an end.

• Denounce the use of BDS whenever employed as a tactic to bring an end to the State of Israel.

 

Anti-BDS Campaigners Liken Movement to Nazi Germany Policies

If you can’t beat ‘em, smear ‘em.

As the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement continues full-steam ahead in its efforts to force Israel to comply with international law, pro-Israel hawks are increasingly attempting to link the movement to anti-Semitism and Nazi Germany-era policies.

The latest person to do so is Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who has been described as “one of the most influential Jewish journalists working in mainstream media.”

Goldberg–who, ironically, recently wrote that “people reaching for insults should find something better than Nazi”–applauds today the New Israel Fund for, as he terms it, leaving the “BDS swamp.”  Goldberg writes:

Because I’m running a campaign on this blog against the cheap deployment of Nazi imagery in argument-making, I am going to resist the urge to point out that the European-centered campaign to launch an economic boycott of the world’s only majority-Jewish country smacks of something historically unpleasant, except now I didn’t resist the urge. But I do actually think it’s a fair analogy, and the BDS movement, like no other anti-Israel propaganda campaign, has sent chills down the collective Jewish spine precisely because economic boycotts have been, throughout history, used to hurt Jews. This is why I was slightly taken aback by Sokatch’s statemen that, “segments of this movement seek to undermine the existence of the state of Israel.” I would say that undermining the existence of the state of Israel is this movement’s raison d’etre.

First off:  the BDS movement is not a “European-centered campaign.”  It is a Palestinian-led civil society movement that has spread to the Western world.  Europe may have a strong Palestine solidarity movement which is increasingly racking up BDS victories, but attempting to invoke the history of European anti-Semitism by labeling the BDS movement a “European-centered campaign” falls apart because the movement is not, in fact, Europe-centric.

Goldberg, and others like him, are guilty of conflating Israel with Judaism, and Jews with Israelis.  The BDS movement is not an economic boycott directed against Jews; it is a boycott movement directed against the State of Israel, which labels itself the Jewish State, because of its flagrant violations of international law and its continued occupation of Palestinian land.  As Alisa Solomon, co-editor of Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, told me in 2009, “it’s a very dubious and dangerous collapse when ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’ are conflated.  Anti-Semites do it a lot, and unfortunately, powers of the Israeli state do it as well.”

Invoking Nazi Germany’s policy of boycotting Jewish-owned businesses as a way to smear the BDS movement is a cheap trick that has no merit.  Nazi Germany instituted a blanket boycott, with no end in sight, that was directed at a persecuted minority just because of their religious faith.  The BDS movement is targeting a state, asking Israel to comply with their obligations under international law, because of their unjust and oppressive policies towards the Palestinian people.  There are many Jewish organizations that support the movement, including inside Israel.

Ali Abunimah, the founder of the Electronic Intifada, had this to say in response to “a cartoon [found in a local Jewish group's paper] from the Israeli strip Dry Bones in which Hitler asks Satan if he believes that BDS is a replay of the Nazi program to economically strange the Jews. ‘Yup,’ Satan replies. ‘It has everything but the swastikas’”:

This ugly defamation is an insult to those who died in the Holocaust.  It cheapens their memory. It cheapens their suffering.

Werner Cohn Smears Academic Critic of Israel Again

Werner Cohn, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of British Columbia, has been making quite a name for himself this year as someone who wants to shut down academic critics of Israel.

He was among the academics leading the smear campaign against Brooklyn College professor Moustafa Bayoumi, the editor of a book highly critical of the Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla.  Bayoumi’s other book about Arab-Americans in Brooklyn was assigned as reading for incoming freshmen at Brooklyn College, which prompted Cohn and others to create an uproar.

Now, Cohn is attacking a self-described anti-Zionist Jew named Jennifer Peto who recently published a thesis on Jewish identity, victim hood and Israel.

Via Mondoweiss, the Canadian Jewish News reports:

The University of Toronto is coming under fire for granting its “imprimatur” to a master’s thesis that critics say is an allegation of “Jewish racism” and is of low academic standards.

In a letter to University of Toronto president David Naylor, retired sociology professor Werner Cohn said the thesis posits that “the Jews of the world, most particularly those of Canada and the United States, are racist and seek to oppress people of colour everywhere.”

The thesis, Cohen goes on, is averse to empirical data, and its author, Jennifer Peto, “makes wild… charges against her fellow Jews without a shred of evidence. . . “

Summarizing her thesis, Peto stated that it “focuses on issues of Jewish identity, whiteness and victimhood within hegemonic Holocaust education. I argue that today, Jewish people of European descent enjoy white privilege and are among the most socio-economically advantaged groups in the West. Despite this privilege, the organized Jewish community makes claims about Jewish victimhood that are widely accepted within that community and within popular discourse in the West…”

To give you an idea on where Cohn is coming from, he has written on “Jews who hate Israel,” links to documents that supposedly show Noam Chomsky’s “links to the neo-Nazis” and recently wrote a blog post that compared the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement to the Nazi campaign of boycotting Jewish-owned businesses in Germany.

It appears Cohn has somewhat of an obsession with members of the Jewish community who are critical of Israeli policy.  But instead of interrogating why such members exist–the occupation, massacres in Gaza, the colonization of the West Bank–he simply denounces them as “haters” of Israel.

Education Department Announcement Sparks Fears of ‘Clamp Down’ on Criticism of Israel

The following article originally appeared in the latest issue of the Indypendent:

Jewish organizations are hailing an Oct. 26 announcement from the U.S. Department of Education that  will reportedly give greater protection against anti-semitism on college campuses.

The announcement  emphasizes that Title VI, the part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits institutions that discriminate  on the basis of race or national origin from receiving federal funding, also includes protections for religious groups that share ethnic characteristics. The statement follows lobbying from Jewish organizations that urged the department to interpret “Title VI to protect Jewish students from anti-semitic  harassment.”

However, the decision has been met with criticism from Palestine solidarity activists who fear that it could be aimed at silencing legitimate dissent against Israel. In an Oct. 29 blog post on MuzzleWatch, a project of Jewish Voice for Peace, activist Eyal Mazor writes that groups like the right-wing Zionist Organization of America advocated for this policy to “clamp down on student activism that has pushed universities to hold Israel accountable to international law.”

New York’s Muslims, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Israel

Protesters throw shoes at a portrait of Mayor Michael Bloomberg after the mayor's trip to Israel while Operation Cast Lead raged on. PHOTO: Zahra Hankir

Ever since Lawrence Swaim of the California-based Interfaith Freedom Foundation articulated his valuable insight to me that the question of Israel courses through Jewish-Muslim relations, I’ve been coming across stories that fit into that theme.  In general, strong support for Israel correlates with an aversion to understanding legitimate Palestinian, Arab and Muslim grievances about the United States and Israel, and given the dehumanization of Palestinians (the majority of them Muslims) that pervades Israeli and U.S. society, it’s no surprise that Israel is a big roadblock in Jewish-Muslim relations.  You have to place the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s opposition to Park 51 in lower Manhattan in that context.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been busy reporting on how Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City is perceived by the Muslim community here–which is at about 800,000 strong–in the wake of Bloomberg’s admirable defense of the mosque and community center near Ground Zero.  (The fruits of my labor are here at the Gotham Gazette.)  A lot of different issues came up in my discussions with Muslim community leaders in New York City, but Bloomberg’s staunch support for Israel came up in a number of interviews.  Bloomberg’s role in not standing up for Debbie Almontaser, the founding and former principal of the city’s first dual-language Arabic school who was felled by a right-wing smear campaign, also had something to do with Israel, as Kiera Feldman points out in this excellent article. Bloomberg’s relationship with the Muslim community is one prominent symbol of the role Israel plays in the challenge of forging strong Jewish-Muslim solidarity, all the more important in a time of rising Islamophobia that bears many of the same hallmarks that characterized anti-Semitism.

In early 2009, around the same time that the massacre of the al-Samouni family occurred in Gaza, Mayor Bloomberg flew in to Israel on his private jet along with NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelley and Representative Gary Ackerman.  Bloomberg went to Sderot, the Israeli town that saw many rockets from Gaza rain down, and laid the blame for the Israeli assault on Hamas: “That they are putting people at risk is an outrage. If Hamas would focus on building a country instead of trying to destroy another one, then those people would not be getting injured or killed.”

This trip enraged the Arab and Muslim community in New York City.  Shortly after Bloomberg’s trip, Palestine solidarity activists organized a rally outside of City Hall, throwing shoes at a portrait of Bloomberg.

“His relationship with Israel, supporting Israel with no limits, hurts us,” Zein Rimawi, a member of the New York City-based Arab Muslim American Federation, recently told me. “Don’t forget: We are Arabs, we are Muslims, and the people in Gaza are Arabs and Muslims and we support them.”

Bloomberg made many New York Muslims happy with his defense of Park 51.  But Israel looms large, and it’s obvious that his disregard for the suffering of the people in Gaza dealt substantial damage to his relationship with the New York City Muslim community.  Take the relationship between Bloomberg and Muslims as a lesson that those interested in forming stronger Jewish-Muslim coalitions must deal with the question of Israel.  Fighting Islamophobia and the right-wing Zionist project of expelling Palestinians from their historic homeland depends on strong Jewish-Muslim solidarity.

Jewish Establishment’s Motto: Hear No Evil, See No Evil On Israel

Nothing will change public discourse in the United States about Israel more than opening up the mainstream Jewish community’s conversation.  The establishment Jewish discourse on Israel is far removed from reality–this is why the five young Jews who interrupted Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly was so important.  It represented a small break from the delusions of the recent assembly, which was all about how Israel’s so-called enemies are “delegitimizing” the state.

Josh Nathan-Katzis (h/t Phil Weiss) of the Forward highlights this in his report from the New Orleans General Assembly (my emphasis):

And though conference leaders claimed to distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from delegitimization, the panels promoted as addressing the issue contained no public critics of Israeli policy. The audience heard instead from Republican messaging guru Frank Luntz and from representatives of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the right-leaning Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

And Joseph Dana, the excellent American-Israeli Jewish blogger and activist, makes a similar point in a must-read piece titled “Letter from America: I Long For the Days When I Can Speak to Community from Which I Came” (emphasis mine):

I am an American Jew who immigrated to Israel and is now working with the Palestinians in non-violence and solidarity. I am also completing a PhD in Jewish History at the Hebrew University. It is a testament to the openness of Palestinians and Palestinian groups in the United States that I am invited to speak as an honoured guest. It is also a reflection of the American Jewish community that they will not even listen to one of their own (American Jewish groups such as Hillel have turned down all of my invitations including at my alma mater where I graduated in the Jewish Studies program) on the issue of Israel’s occupation and non-violence.

Much work remains to be done on opening up the discourse in the U.S. Jewish community.  I like to think of myself as something of an idealist, and I admit that, so I’ll say that I think we’re getting somewhere.